To me anyway... Clumsy storytelling. Great visuals. Still, like I said elsewhere, at times I had a feeling of having wandered into Jonathan Livingston Seagull. But it did have Ellen Burstyn, which makes up for some of it. Woohoo, Ellen!

What about you, Scott H?

deeper the blue sky
unready to give us the
blessing of snowfall

I was debating whether to go see it this weekend. But since you asked, I would recommend any of the following DVDs:

* Rome (HBO miniseries)
* Code 46 (smartish SF starring Tim Robbins & Samantha Morton)
* District B13 (forgettable dystopian story, AMAZING stunts. Can be safely turned off at the 20 minute mark)
* Subject Two (moody, Frankenstein-y)

It's not that I hated the movie. It simply was very flawed and could have been fixed by knocking out the director, fixing his script, then waking him up. Hell, even I could have improved the story, and I couldn't write my way out of a paper bag. (Well, maybe out of a small paper bag.)

As for your recommendations... Are they all HBO-type stories? The only one I've even heard of is Rome and I've never even seen it. That'll change since I got my wife the DVD of the first season for Christmas.

Scott Lemieux already wrote his.

Ah, there is somebody out there besides my wife and I who likes that movie.

My last latin class was back in 1987, so I can't help with your motto. Do you have room for Agnostic Animists?

#11: Thanks for the update. And absolutely. Radical Pantheism is a choice to worship the universe in its physical substance as such; no belief is required, nor credo espoused, other than...well, natura ipsa sufficit.

#12: Thanks! Maybe I could just more concisely phrase it as Natura Sufficit? The idea is that Nature is so amazing, so wondrous, so infinitely complex in itself, that no one who is sufficiently aware of these facts needs to postulate any Divine force beyond Nature. I like the 'Ipsa' for that reason, partly because it also means "herself" (if I'm correct in believing that 'natura' is a feminine noun). This pleases my Wiccan bits!

VDH:

"With the trials of this administration having been carefully considered, not least their fortitude in the face of the decadence and corruption of the culture around them, it seems quite correct for me to remind you once again of the disastrous outcome of the Peloponnesian War. There too, a free, liberal, and open society was faced by an implacable enemy who cared little for the luxuries of life or for the false virtues of "freedom of speech"; and there too they were led astray by a populist crusade to fight overseas in distant Sicily, leaving their fields and homesteads undefended. For the relevance to the contemporary situation, read only Afghanistan for Sicily; and for Themistocles, George W. Bush. Oh no, hang on."

Hmm...

natura certainly is a feminine noun; I've been capitalising it as a kind of reflex so that it refers unambiguously to the goddess, but then I'm thinking in Roman terms. I reckon you should see ipsa as meaning "herself" first and foremost, whether talking about goddess or, well, phenomenon. "Nature herself suffices" seems fine to me in English.

That's probably enough Latin. (ed.)

I don't think the moral is nearly as deep or profound of ineffable as the filmmaker thinks it was.

Assuming I'm not totally not getting it.

Rats, now I have to think. LOL

And before anyone says anything, the argument it kind of proposes isn't supposed to make sense.

Our leaders should take heart from the example of the Pelopponesian War for that conflict demonstrated that a state based on the virtues that would go on to make Western Civilisation great could triumph over a decadent, corrupt regime which sought to spread its anti-Hellenic, revolutionary ideology to all the states of the old Mediterranean world. George W. Bush should take heart from the example of Lysander the Spartan, that heroic exemplar of all that is good, and fear not the Iranian demagogues such as Ahmadinejad, that heir of the rabble-rouser Cleisthenes.

Jason Epstein, Print on Demand: A Revolution in the Making,: 3:15 PM Saturday, 45 minutes long.

Marvin Kalb, Allan Adler, Paul Aiken, Jonathan Band, Andrew Glass, David Robbins, Sidney Verba, The Google Print Project and the Future of the Written Word : 10:30 AM Sunday, 1 hour and 40 minutes long.

And for a change of pace:

After Words: Larry Kahaner, author of AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War, interviewed by Peter Singer: 9 PM Saturday, 6 PM and 9 PM Sunday, 55 minutes long.

Anybody here familiar with the Epstein book or the Kahaner book?

With the exception of Rom, all the titles I listed in #5 were reasonably current movies on DVD. I've got one of those all-you-care-to-watch for $20 / month deals, so I'm willing to experiment on obscure titles. The ones listed were all surprisingly good.

I wade through the crap so you don't have to.

Fragano: you're right, the example of Lysander does seem appropriate right now. Then again, I've always liked the Spartans.

OK. I think I shall limit myself in future to declarative statements. I am tired.

It's a dirty job, but someone has got to do it. And this reminds me how much I miss Joe Bob Briggs.

I'm reminded of Jonathan Shay's _Achilles in Vietnam_. Among other things, it explains why PTSD was more common in veterans of Vietnam than of veterans of previous wars. I read it almost exactly a year ago. What struck me at the time were the parallels the Iraq War had to Vietnam in this context.

It was a starlit night at HAWC, the High-technology Aerospace Weapons Centre in Southern Nevada. As he walked into the hanger USAF Lt Col Patrick Maclanahan looked up into the sky. That was where the trim, sandyhaired officer wanted to be; flying in a cutting edge jet rather than managing research projects on the ground.

Everyone else had left for the night, but Maclanahan was determined to sort out the bugs in the weapons system submenu. He climbed into the darkened B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and retrieved the troublesome electronic box, intending to tinker with the display. Just as he got the box hooked up to diagnostics, the phone rang.

"Hello? Oh hello General. No, I'm the only one here... the security system is off? Several checkpoints appear to be unmanned? No one released the dogs this evening..." He paused, abruptly distracted by a shapely woman's leg propped up on the crew ladder of the aircraft in front of him.

"Sorry General, can I get back to you?" Without waiting for an answer he hung up.

"Patrick! There you are," said Wendy Tork. "What are you doing here? Is there anything wrong?"

Maclanahan showed her the box. "I've been trying to get this to work all day. The weapons submenus consistently choose the wrong weapon parameters for the loadout."

[For my own reasons I've chosen not to copy the page and a half explaining how the Multi Function Display is supposed to integrate the onboard radar and IR, as well as external satellite, radar and other information sources along with GPS and inertial guidance with the currently available weapons as well as the current threat and mission parameters to offer the optimum selection(s) of weapon choices.]

"....but it doesn't recognise which weapon is in each position in the CSRL, so it might launch a SLAM as though it were a SDB or vice versa, with an obvious reduction in effectiveness."

"Patrick, that's not important now though, is it? I mean, what are the odds that terrorists or foreign agents are going to break into this highly secure and isolated airbase, forcing us to escape in an experimental bomber, then discover that we're the only ones in a position to make an attack against an immediate threat to world peace?"

"Pretty slim, I guess," said Maclanahan, "but you did ask what's wrong."

"No Patrick," said Wendy, "I meant is there something wrong with you? You've seemed so distant. Is it... is there someone else?"

Patrick looked at her. How could he be so blind? Ignoring the brief flutter of guilt, he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Wendy, I could never love another... woman..."

As his voice stuttered his eyes flicked up involuntarily to the where the dark nose of his specially modified B-52 stared down at him reproachfully...

(Somehow, I doubt Dale Brown will be paying me $.20 for this post; worse still, if I ever try to join the Romance Writers of America I will undoubtedly be blackballed. Worst of all, I've put an annotated version, which will explain some of the Dale Brown specific bits here.)

You can look again now. Next I'll have to see if any Dale Brown has been translated into latin - I've seen Harry Potter in latin, so who knows?

* He hasn't really. I made it up. Sorry.

that would be Powerhouse.

and if you like (or have fond memories of) Looney Tunes music, you'll probably like The Carl Stalling Project.

Still, the deadline is 5pm PST, isn't it? That gives me a few hours to think about it still. I doubt the Ben Hur set is going to be sent across the Atlantic even in the best case scenario, though. (My brush with CSU Fresno is long - well, a year - in the past now.)

That report raised quite a few eyebrows, including of the Senatorial variety.

Investigations are underway.

Anybody here familiar with the Epstein book or the Kahaner book?

epstein did a piece on the same subject in a recent new york review of books... oh, here it is: books @ google.

he waxes enthusiastic about the idea of book atms, you know, that you type in the title & the book is printed, bound, cut, & spit out while-u-wait.

coincidentally, i read that article not long after there was the big discussion here about how that dream is not really feasible with today's technology or bookstore realities.

I feel deeply ambivalent about the movie — on the one hand it was very interesting to look at, and very pleasant to listen to. On the other, its storytelling was utterly lacking in coherence.

It's something that might appeal strongly to those who can disengage themselves from causal logic, and who are idiosyncratically aesthetically oriented towards surrealism and slowly-moving strongly contrasting visual patterns and slow, moody music.

And isn't that a wonderfully roundabout way of saying "trippy"?

It's better than π (Pi), which had similar flaws in storytelling, but was far uglier to the eye and ear.

Well, apart from a winter haiku. But that hardly counts.

Non sola aethra
Sole ardescit mane
Sed ego quoque.

I think it might be Powerhouse, by Raymond Scott. Here is a YouTube link to an animation by Antonio Linhares, in the style of Oskar Fischinger, to Scott's composition (I can tell you the name of the piece and the musician, because Antonio identified them in the info accompanying the animation).

It's a pretty cool piece. I had recently seen a tribute to Oskar Fischinger at the Dryden Theatre (at the George Eastman House), and when I saw this animation on YouTube, it stuck in my memory.

'Trippy' is the very word that came to my mind, Owlmirror, as I was watching The Fountain.

It's frustrating to watch a movie that could have been great.

On the other hand, I am weak, I've had some whisky, and it was you inciting me. Aren't you a bit beardy for a muse?

On the gripping hand, I do actually enjoy composing haiku in entirely unsuitable languages. I no longer have the C++ one I wrote years ago, but you get the idea.

------
* barring the inevitable slogan requests

What's that called? Dangling participles? ;)

Oh, and wouldn't a B-52 look down "bombastically" rather than "reproachfully?"

Probably, abi, but I've never been called a muse before. You've made my day.

Good question, Susan, about feline chirality. I'll have to see what it is that the Bad Cat does.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061208/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/detainee_abuse

If ever I had considered bribing a judge, it would be right now, Lawful Good or not.

Thanks for the clarification. I must admit to not really knowing enough about grave markers vs. plaques to have been aware that a difference exists (we usually cremate our dead). I learn the most interesting things here.

re: Latin compositions. I always hear the theme music from the Mighty Mouse cartoon when sharing favorite Latin palindrome - Sum summus mus!

So I ordered up a bunch of Brown (I read fast so I like to have a couple books in a series ready at hand)from Amazon. I didn't think I'd read the passage you quote - but damn if it wasn't perfect. (especially your mention of the page and a half you skipped - that's exactly how I read Brown and Clancy - skim for plot, skip the lovingly detailed specs of whatever super weapon de jure comes along). I have to admit that I have a number of unread Dale Brown books sitting on the shelf. I think I took a sanity break after the third or fourth one. My willing suspension of disbelief can only stand so much stress.

If you ever do write Sky Angels, I promise to read it.

I didn't think I'd read the passage you quote - but damn if it wasn't perfect. (especially your mention of the page and a half you skipped - that's exactly how I read Brown and Clancy - skim for plot, skip the lovingly detailed specs of whatever super weapon de jure comes along).

Funny, I'm the sort of reader who whizzes through the plot and slows down for the superweapons...

That made me laugh; I was thinking we've traced the call, and he's in the house...

The first person to respond to Serge's question (cleek) gave a wikipedia link to a Powerhouse entry; there's a couple of sound links at the end of the article; one to a portion of the “assembly line” theme Serge was thinking of, and another to a portion of the “chase” theme you're describing. I hadn't noticed the first post before I had run off on my own, to track down my scrap of memory.

You're responding to my post (and thanks for checking out the animation). Both themes were familiar, but I never would have been able to attach a name to them, or recognized that they came from the same piece.

Serge @ 67: I thought I recalled him taking his shirt off to apply the sap. I suppose the angle means it doesn't count....

Tamora Pierce, an art teacher, and a young student interact in various ways to the mutual gain of all. This has had me smiling for an hour now, after a heart-consuming rotten day.

Actually, I think Hugh Jackman does take his shirt off. There's a scene where he's giving Rachel Weisz a warm bath, and there's a bit of splashing around in the water as bathing becomes making out.

I think the shirt comes off then, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Oh, and the shirt does definitely come off at the end, as mentioned, but at that point, he's been stabbed. The Jackman torso is shown with a bloody wound, which might affect its visual appeal and pulchritudousness.

The last time I tried to read a Clancy novel (The Bear and the Dragon), I found myself desperately hoping for the war to start, so that he'd stop the horrible, horrible attempts at politics, non-military conversations, and sex scenes. (OK, only one sex scene, but it was really bad writing). Not to mention the tediously silly atemtps to show off his research by constantly referring to certain characters by the Secret Service code names.

And, in fact, things did improve once the war started.

I don't remember the other two Clancy books I read (his first two) being nearly that bad.

Now, now. Be nice.
Or the Great Spirit of conditional giving
won't bring you any presents.

Waugh!!!

A DETECTIVE was arrested for allegedly filming up women's skirts with a hidden camera.

The married anti-terrorist officer told police he was working undercover to video al-Qaeda suspects. But back at the station they found his camera had close-ups of bottoms and knickers.

Props for Security Theater:

WASHINGTON, July 18 — Flat-bottomed rescue boats at double the retail price, $68,500 worth of unused dog booties, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of computers that somehow disappeared and a $227 beer brewing kit.

These are just a few of the questionable purchases that Congressional auditors have found by digging through half a year of credit card records from the Homeland Security Department, including records for the months immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.

At least the US guys didn't buy any miniature cameras to film up girls' skirts.

Did they?

The first two Clancy books are better than the rest; I have those, and got rid of the others. (I heard that the Washington reaction to Red Storm Rising was something like 'OMG! We forgot about Iceland!')

(I am not, however, about to start posting my conlang poetry here, despite temptation. I have enough self-awareness to realize that throwing around one's conlang is a step down from "Let me tell you about my character" as clueless geeky behavior goes.)

Has this been confirmed anywhere else?

I've warmed a bit to LXG, though it remains one of the few films I indulge in griping about how much better the book was - in this case because there was so much cinematic potential with the stuff that was in the comic that got pushed aside. And really, it was a very small amount that it asked me to turn off my brain more than I was willing to, or I'd have really liked it; if nothing else, the production values are stunning. Van Helsing, by contrast, is unpretentious; silly as it is, it didn't get there from starting life as a smart and literate comic.

*Referring, of course, to the much-despised commercial fruitcake, as per the Other Thread.

I thought that what was wrong with the world was that responsibility for the Script had just been handed over to a team consisting of the ghosts of George Orwell and Phil Dick.

However, I now realize that we're not living in a scripted world at all. Instead, we're non-player characters in an adventure game setting created by Tom Clancy and Dale Brown, watching Team America (played by your neighbour's dumb kid who lives in their basement) get its collective ass handed to it by an irate celestial GM who was hoping to run an interesting character-driven session rather than munchkin hack'n'slay, and who is therefore taking it out on the kid.

Certainly if Clancy had ever handed in a novel where the Forces of Good™ were subjected to the kind of hard nosed rules-lawyering we've seen since July 2003, his editors would have felt the need to take him aside for a quiet word ...

Look! Over there! Is that clock melting, yet?

Soldiers Say Army Ignores, Punishes Mental Anguish

One the other: What total fucking self-brainwashed macho-bureaucratic pricks.

Good point, Dan. But Sommers's Mummy movies were unpretentious too and they were fun, in a leave-your-brain-at-the-front-desk way. My own problem with van Helsing is that there was way too much stuff being thrown at us. Think of the action-packed scene at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark and maintain the same pace to the movie's very end. Numbing. For me anyway.

Back to LXG, what did you think of the 2nd graphic novel, with its background of the War of the World? It left me unsatisfied. Not sure why.

This manipulation of intelligence was done, the charge continues, “with the intent to misinform the people and their representatives in Congress in order to gain their support for invading Iraq, denying both the people and their representatives in Congress the right to make an informed choice.”

Yaw!

They're playing "Constantine" (Keaneu Reeves) on TV now, and I've seen it at least three times. Everytime I watch it, I like it more. Apparently it bombed at the box office though, which I don't understand. I mean, Constantine seems better than some of the big money makers in the same genre. Though I might be missing something.

My jaw dropped when it even fit in a canal. In the scene where we first see the Nautilis, it's about the size of the Titanic. Then there's that ridiculously large “auto-mobile” (just the sort of thing you would carry around in a submarine, on the off chance it might be useful), racing along wide, lengthy, and unpopulated streets; it would seem that Venice would have to be as large as Manhattan for the time it took for the car to reach its destination. I don't get why firing a missle in the center of the city was going to stop the rest of the submerged bombs from going off, or why they didn't just all go off at once (or at least, finish detonating in the time it took for the car to reach its destination).

But that sequence aside, I thought the rest of the movie hung together fairly well.

Aha! "Hitherby Dragons" is what it's called. Nemmine, thanks!

It's got a ton of his columns - the drive-in movie reviews (alphabetically), Vegas guy, the John Bloom work, and many other Joe Bob type things.

The last time I remember seeing Joe Bob televised was God Talk, on the Craig Kilbourn version of the Daily Show. Sadly, I have found no clips. God Talk was easily the funniest bit from that era of the Daily Show.

http://blogs.news-journalonline.com/247/2006/12/why_we_love_the_fireflyserenit.html

(This may also be an argument for free travel between the US and Canada?)

Is this really about Bush blatantly serving his dark masters by destroying the EPA? Even he wouldn't be that obvious, would he?

I also watched the movie looking forward to the director and cast trashing Sean Connery on the DVD commentary, but didn't get so much of that.

Paul, #87, indeed McKinney filed for impeachment, but it's not going anywhere. (scroll down to third item)

By the way, I hope 2007 is the year I finally buy the CD with Spike Jones doing "The Powerhouse." I keep seeing it in the store, and not getting it.

I think I travelled the same road with 1980's Flash Gordon. From being thought of as a piece of bleep, it has become one of my Guilty Pleasures. Unfortunately, my wife went the other way, from liking it to threatening divorce if I put the DVD on if she's around. Okay, I made the divorce bit up. But I can't watch it when she's around. The situation is the same with another of my Guilty Pleasure, 1976's At The Earth's Core even though it has everything a person could ask for. It's got Doug McClure. And Caroline Munro. Peter Cushing as a scientist who makes a bow using his suspenders. Special effects that give cheese a bad name. Dinosaurs from the guy-in-a-rubbersuit school of thought. What is there not to like?

Constantine has grown on me too. Once I got over wanting it to be Hellblazer (and wishing for James Marsters), it's a perfectly decent occult yarn, and true in many ways to the spirit of the earlier comics. (I'd still like to visit the universe where they actually made a movie out of Dangerous Habits, though.)

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share

Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there

Christmas time is here
We'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year...

(from 1965's Charlie Brown Christmas Special)

I firmly believe that no one, and no crime, is unforgiveable, but that was a belief he sore tried in me. As Cordelia Naismith said, "I'll have to leave that to the Infinite. You exceed my capacity."

This is more for Teresa, but here's an interesting article about how LDS church leaders lent verbal support to Pinochet's regime. I remember being quite tweaked when I first discovered it myself, but hearing that your erstwhile church leaders considered his coup "an act that served the purposes of the Lord" is more than a little disturbing.

Neither was Marechal Petain, after France's liberation.

--Mary Aileen

Your comment led me to do this:

we go for learning to the newest source
the oracle of a thousand quacking fowl
the ducks who speak wiser than any owl
and congregate on every watercourse
the wisest monk hiding beneath his cowl
or savvy boy scout schooled by baden-powell
has no more sense that ordinary horse
the birds though overwhelm the sense
give no option to us but now to hearken
to their wise redes given in loudest voice
we crowd up to the strong barrier fence
the sky above is clearly bound to darken
but still we find we've lost all power of choice

Hey, I'm a muse! Cool!

--Mary Aileen

I'll see if I can dig the video up, and I'll send it out to anyone who wants it.

Bless you.

Been kept wondering by the japanese translation, in a "Am I not reading enough in the english sentences, or am I reading too much in the japanese ones ?" way.

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/56844

This is not so much to boast as to marvel that I uncovered anything weird on the Internets before TNH did.

Is that the one with Queen doing the whole soundtrack?

I love you, Flash, but we only have (N) minutes to save the Earth.

Nag, nag, nag.

Yeah, that was pretty cool.

(Look, it's Advent, getting on towards Christmas, Peace on earth to men and women of goodwill; I'm trying to be nice.)

No, as noted later in the thread there is a long kissy bathtub scene whose entire purpose seems to have been to have a long loving look at wet shirtless Hugh.

The Fountain is A Big Serious Allegory; the only way it could be less subtle is if the main characters had names like Loving Man Blinded by Own Ambition and Woman Of Intuition. Stirring violins are unrelenting in telling us "here's a Poignant Important Moment; here's another". Also there is lots and lots of crying in close-up, which drives me bats because it makes me cry involuntarily even if I'm totally unmoved.

I agree that it could have been good with a few changes; as-is, it's tolerable only because Jackman and Weiss (and yay Ellen Burstyn!) are very watchable. If you love surreal images, it might be worth seeing on the big screen, but otherwise not.

Yes, the internet will still be working; just at a slightly higher overall latency rate.

Venice has streets where it's possible to drive a car?!

Conversation that took place in my household when we rented the American version of "The Italian Job":

Movie: [exciting boat chase through Venice]
Caroline: You know, you don't see too many exciting boat chases through Venice in action movies.
Keith: You know what you see even less of? Exciting car chases through Venice.
Caroline: How do you have a car chase in Venice, exactly?
Keith: I really don't know. But it was in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen anyway.

You should be careful what you wish for:

We've had some new developments of late,
Parnassus and Helicon are in a tizzy
almost as if the Pierian spring were fizzy
or someone had goosed Moira the Fate.
The Muses, now let me set you straight,
have never been either light or dizzy
but now their attitude's become quite quizzy
and bright Apollo has been shown the gate.
The ladies, in their mystical communion,
have made decisions that frighten even Zeus
who's not one normally to show alarm;
their decision to form their own trade union
has warned Olympus not to be obtuse
lest the more earthbound spirits come to harm.

Well, Dan, cats are devilish creatures.

Because it was based on a cult-beloved comic, and screwed with same. It was too fannish for your average action-movie-goer to really connect with, and the fen were peeved because it wasn't Hellblazer.

Me, I like Hellblazer, and I think a film of it (with James Marsters, doing his Spike accent, as Constantine) would be fabulous. I also rather liked Constantine, because it didn't try to get Keanu to do anything he couldn't handle and had a number of very cute nods to the source material. It was a fine...um. Was it DC or Marvel that had "Elseworlds"? Constantine was one of those.

Excellent!

The thing about Keanu isn't that he's uniformly bad; it's that he has a very limited range. As Neo (and as Siddhartha, shockingly enough), he's great. As Don John or Johnathan Harker... well, his mouth fills up with text that his tongue's not deft enough to process. (But I get the impression that he's quite a bit smarter than his limitations as a performer might suggest.)

As a fan, the thing I missed most in the Constantine film was John's sense of humor. I would have liked to see a bit more of the "laughing magician" - that's the thing that makes the comics such a delight, for me, and the kind of thing that an actor like Marsters* would be able to pull off a lot better than Reeves, accent or no.

*I've become convinced that Spike, to a large degree, is John Constantine in vampire drag anyway.

Owlmirror @#50:

I haven't seen The Fountain yet, but I did just rewatch Pi last night. On rewatching, some of the plot seemed a little light -- for one thing, Max's descent into insanity was a little too fast for me. (I also didn't like how he couldn't get some of the details of the Golden Ratio right).

However, I have to disagree with your implication that Pi's "ugli[ness] to the eye and ear" was somehow wrong in context. I thought that it was precisely that ugliness which made the movie so powerful. The omnipresent whine in the sonic background and the harsh, flat and grainy lighting was all intended to simulate a migraine (or more, specifically, the moments just before the pain hits in a migraine [fortunately I only know this from second-hand accounts]). The occasionaly jerky cinematography was also intended for the same purpose -- to immerse us in the viewpoint of the main character. IMHO, it was very effective.

All that being said, I wouldn't suggest this movie to anyone who is either a migraine sufferer or who suffers from chronic (non-migraine) headaches. It may cause some discomfort even in those not prone to such ailments -- but on the whole it is a powerful and striking movie (and more than a little bizarre, which I find to be a selling point).

I haven't read Hellblazer, so I have nothing to compare the movie to. I thought Keanu's version worked.

I am trying to imagine a "laughing magician" and can't even visualize it. The best I can do is insert the wise cracking Ron Perlman from hellboy, which seems like would make Constantine a completely different movie.

Oh well, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably buy Constantine on DVD at some point.

And Pearl Harbor, which offended a whole lot of actual people who know the history and/or live within sight of the place.

I stared in fascinated horror at part of that movie. I can't believe Hugh Jackman let himself be associated with that excrescence.

The idea that it's better than something else makes me shudder at the thought of the something else.

You could at least give it credit for the fully-automatic, rotary-magazine fed crossbow.

Couldn't you?

No?

Oh, alright. Never mind.

Plus (as Kenneth Hite pointed out in his amusing review of the movie), Kate Beckinsale in a corset.

Jumping back a bit... Serge @ 85 said, re LXG:
In some ways, it was better than Alan Moore's graphic novel.

I'm really curious: in what ways? 'Cause I found it pretty uniformly inferior to the original graphic novel.

As for Beckinsale in a corset... I still wonder how she managed to get into that skin-tight outfit in Underworld.

Clifton - I like the "I must not fear" Firefox extension. When installed, one of the Tools menu lists "I must not fear", and when selected a window pops up with the "fear is the mind-killer" litany from Dune. Some days I need that kind of reminder.

Blindsight is a medical term -- certain forms of brain damage (including some strokes) can cause a person not to be consciously aware of things in part or all of their visual field (i.e. they are blind). However, their eyes and parts of the visual processing mechanisms are there, so they can do things like catch a ball. They see, the conscious mind just can't access what they're seeing. Very cool and bizarre neuropathology.
This does tie into the book (not going to explain how). The book as a whole -- think first contact via the Aliens movies, with less gut-bursting and a much (much!) more interesting crew.

And no, this isn't a spoiler, I haven't said anything you couldn't get out of the blurb.

Seconded.

Blindsight had been on my list of books to find. I read it yesterday. Lovely, sharp, powerful.

I'd suggest you don't finish reading it late at night. Finish it where there's still time to go out and meet with people after. Distract yourself and keep his memes from burrowing too deep, because they have a kick.

If a good novel is like a fine-crafted bottle of beer or wine, then Blindsight is a partially vacuum distilled eau de vie from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Failing that, how long does it actually take to run a DNA test?

I seem to remember from jury duty that getting results back from a busy and backlogged lab could take months. The actual test, I don't know how long that takes. The backlog can be considerable, though.

For what its worth.

That doesn't make sense to me. At least part of the DNA will have to code for that rigid cell wall, which is a plant characteristic. It could be a combination of plant and animal DNA, I guess, but purely animal DNA with a rigid cell wall is a contradiction.

#175: PJ, what I am hoping for is an animal cell equivalent to chloroplasts, i.e., something in animal cells not in plant cells that would be visually identifiable as such.

#176: Greg London, the backlog was my understanding too, which is why I'm hoping for some kind of visual marker for animal cells.

I really appreciate everyone's input!

#177: Xopher: You're right--I was a little too vague in my original question. I'm not creating a strict plant wall with a total animal interior. Basically, I'm looking at a species that is like a tree nymph of classical mythology. I wanted to posit that their cells would reflect some kind of plant/human hybrid. Basically, I want my lab person to look at the cell in a microscope and say "It's a plant cell but what the hell is XXXXX doing in the cytoplasm." With the XXXX being the cell component unique to animal cells.

TRANSCONTINENTAL FUDGE TRANSPORT!

My parents and siblings decided that this is going to be a No Big Gifts Christmas (except maybe for the nieces).

I'm thinking of making batches of the Kahluha and Creme de Menthe (that's two different recipies) and giving a small box of each to various folks.

Any clever ideas on transporting, in airline luggage, about three pounds of inch-thick fudge which has a squishy paste layer covered by relatively fragile "chocolate bark?"

Freezing is a possibility, but we're talking a 12 hour trip when the train ride from Newark to Otisville is taken into account.

Metallic containers probably not a good idea, if only because I don't want homeland security guys sampling the stuff.

1. Peter Pan

I seem never to have actually read the original novel, so I got a copy and fixed that. Wendy is even more annoying than I recalled from the other versions of the story. Must listen to Sooj songs to clean my brain now.

2. Pride of Baghdad

Graphic novel, or maybe novella - it's pretty short. Lions in Baghdad during the beginning of the war. Put this on the list of things not to read while depressed, but definitely read it. After I finish cleaning my brain, I can go slit my wrists.

Bleah.

Land of Mist and Snow is filed in the literature section. All others by Doyle & Macdonald are in the SF&F section.

I'm sure there's logic here that I'm missing.

Meanwhile, when I was looking for MacDonald Fraser's Pyrates at my favorite bookstore, they didn't have it in the F/SF or mystery sections, so I started looking under 'Literature'. Still, I couldn't find it there either so in desperation (*), I asked the people working there. It was in the Literature section, but not under letter 'M'. It was under 'F'.

(*) My wife is the one less likely to ask for directions when we're lost.

Stefan @180:
Thank you for that, I'll now be sitting here with a smile on my face for the rest of the morning picturing the Great Alaskan Fudge Pipeline. The fudge smugglers who tap into the pipeline for free fudge. The horrors of a fudge spill -- masses of caribou, covered in fudge, lying around moaning.

The is not Hell, this is New Mexico

The War on Fluids can finally end!

Right?

Right?

Think of the benefit to the truffle species which lives only in permafrost.

Not going there, not going there ...

Conan in the Wall Street Journal

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009378

Við erum frá Síam sé þér sama
Sé þér ekki sama er okkur sama.
Komum nú og kynnum okkur hýbýlin
Kannski ef okkur líkar vel, við flytjum inn.

"Sérðu þetta þarna synda skálinni í?"
"Mjá, systir ættum við að reynað drekkja því?
Máltíð er vér báðum boðin girnileg"

Borðað getur hausinn þú, og styrlið ég!

"Þei, þei, hvað er þetta?"
"Ó, en grátur sár!"
"Þar sem eru börn má finna mjólkurtár! "

Förum nú og fellum barn úr vöggunni
Fáum okkur smá af mjólkurlögginni.

Solid chocolate is fine for carryon*, although the "paste layer" makes the fudge iffy *if* you told them it was something other than "Solid Chocolate." If the fudge is freezing cold they might get suspicious** that it'd get gel or liquid-like at room temperature. The cold temperatures in the hold may be better for a long flight.

In checked luggage, chocolate, like cheese, wax, or stacks of books, will set off their "density is like c4" alarm. Plan that they'll open your suitcase. I like your idea- a few printed recipes is a subtle way to say you're watching. (Another less-subtle way I just thought of is to take a pic of the packed suitcase, then print a copy of the pic and put it in... ostensibly to show them how to repack your items.)

I'd pack the pans in separate plastic bags (ziplock makes larger than gallon sizes now- I find that useful for wine, etc) with bubble wrap. I wouldn't worry about metal, because
1. they'll be searching it anyways
2. metal is probably lighter than pyrex (airlines now charge crazily if you go over their limits)
3. they'll be seeing plenty of other travellers with foods.
I'd then put that into a cardboard shell to give the extra edge of protection - magazine holders would work well and pack down for reuse, for example, yet make it easy for security to look at the fudge. I'd then place the pans like eggs in the middle of the suitcase, clothing packed densely around the sides of the case.

* Based on personal solid-chocolate and/or cookies carryon recently, plus a quick search on Flyertalk security forum. Flyertalk is the best place to learn or ask flight related questions. Warning: do not read the security forum if stories of stupidity could affect your blood pressure.

** They get suspicious at anything, and you can assume no knowledge on their part about the natural history or nature of any substance. For example, if you have two identically sized bottles, one marked that it contains '30 ml' and the other blank, they have no internal understanding that the 2nd bottle is also '30 ml.'

I found, by the dumpsters, an enormous roller-bag that I'm hoping to take at least one way. (Picture an oversized gym bag with hard plastic skids on the bottom and wheels on one end.) I could pack all clothes and gifts in it, but it is probably too big to check in.

OTOH, I have several smaller bags, but I hate the idea of checking in and carrying on.

* * *

Recipe? I invented this stuff myself. Maybe I should carry a sample to give to the TSA guys...

It was PJ Evans who suggests printing the recipe. Heck, go to epicurious and find one to print.

My partner and I usually try to travel carry-on only, but not at Christmas (even before the latest rules). Given the crowdedness of holiday flights, checking nearly everything can feel good. Consider that:

1. carry-on inspections may raise your blood pressure. (you have the right to ask the TSA to change gloves if they're going to be fondling your food. They'll get pissy at that, though.)
2. on a sufficiently crowded flight, attendants might make you gate-check the bag anyways.
3. the non-zero possibility that the TSA is confused as to whether or not fudge is a solid, liquid, or gas.

You can use empty cardboard boxes to fill up space in the big bag.

1) It's food. If your luggage is "misdirected" for several hours or days, who knows what sorts of conditions it will be exposed to?

2) You're planning to freeze it. Frozen fudge plus all your clothes, plus lost luggage, equals chocolate coated gym socks.

3) It's not a liquid. Tell them the truth. It's fudge. There's no need to describe the slightly less completely solid layer.

4) There's no way in hell I'd let a hand-crafted gift item--knitted, baked, candied, or otherwise--out of my hands for anyone but the recipient.

If you *do* carry it on, pack it so they can see--more or less--what it is. Wrap the stuff in saran (or ziplocs, if you're feeling sarcastic), put it in a box that you'll be easily able to open if they ask to see what's inside. Don't wrap the boxes. Don't wrap the fudge in foil. Don't give them cause to think "hey, if that's fudge in there, why's he protecting it like it's heroin?"

IMHO,YMMV etc.

Alternatively--and this is probably what I'd do--you could look into express shipping. Three pounds shouldn't be horribly pricey...

If I had it on hand, ready to go, that would make perfect sense.

But I was planning on making it this weekend, and a week wouldn't be enough to guarantee Christmas delivery.

I'm going to check out Goodwill for some cheap plastic airtight food containers. Something I won't mind leaving at the other end.

Carry only the recipe and make the fudge as a family activity at your destination?

I'd probably FedEx[1] it myself (guaranteed next-day delivery, dropped off at FedEx as late as possible). But I'm used to shipping packages to New Zealand, so a next day FedEx package wouldn't seem too expensive to me.

[1] Or other overnight service.

THE HISTORY BOYS
SHUT UP AND SING
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Which made me wonder how many titles I could string together deliberately. My maximum so far is nine:

NAKED
FRIENDS
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT
ALWAYS
HELP
THELMA AND LOUISE
DO THE RIGHT THING
FOR THE BOYS
IN THE BEDROOM

But I'm confident that folks in this forum can do better.

Back in 1993, at a multiplex:
MRS DOUBTFIRE
FALLING DOWN

And the titles of the songs on kd lang's "All You Can Eat," with the punctuation that comes naturally to my mind: "If I were you, maybe you're OK. Sexuality? Get some! Acquiesce this world of love, infinite and unforseen; I want it all."

So maybe the first half is a little awkward, but from "Acquiesce" on, I don't see how it could have been accidental.

Can anyone give me some quick hints on shipping holiday cookies? I've been told to put marshmallows in the box as packing... as both cushioning and to "absorb" the staleness. Any validity in that? Any other good tips?

Once again, thanks in advance for any available wisdom.

Thinking about it, I'd probably want to carry it on, but would bring a folded cardboard box (+tape wrapped around a pen) on the 1% chance the TSA gets weird on you. Tell them it's solid fudge, though, don't mention the frosting.

If you're on a direct flight, or arriving more than 3 days ahead [3 days *and* you'll be in their delivery radius, that is], then stuff being in checked luggage is less risky.

WASHINGTON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was hospitalized on Wednesday with a possible stroke, drawing the concern of fellow Democrats preparing to take control next month of a closely divided Senate.

"At this stage, he is undergoing a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team," Johnson's office said in a statement while the 59-year-old senator was treated at George Washington University Hospital.

While further word was awaited on Johnson's condition, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill did not appear particularly alarmed and noted he promptly received medical attention after sustaining a possible stroke.

"He has great doctors looking after him," one aide said.

Let's hope so. My reaction to this is an acute awareness that the ground separating us from a return plunge into the pit of Hell is frighteningly thin.

Baggage situation is see-sawing drastically. I was leaning toward minimalist equipage, but my mom told me her funky desktop PC died. I'm tempted to cram one of my spares* in the aforementioned giant roller bag, which would still have room left over for fudge. OTOH, it would mean lugging a 50 lb. bag around. Ungh. Maybe I should find a machine at a Sullivan County Goodwill. Seee-sawww.

Heh: I wonder how sniffer dogs would react to (recalculation) 5.25 lbs. of fudge soaked with fragrant liquor?

* "Spare computer". That still produces a minor boggle.

On the other hand, it would indeed be bad politically speaking if he decides to resign. Oy.

We are so screwed.

What % of people that you know unexpectedly have zero presence on the web, that is, zero hits for their name?

I recently found an old address book, and out of curiosity (aka procrastination) did some searches for people I hadn't seen or contacted for 13+ years. Of the guys I looked up (with women a name-change is not unlikely) most had at least some minor traces online. But for others there was nothing.

Not that I expect people to be online, but nowadays it seems hard to not be referenced. My grandma's name shows up, and she's never used a computer (through an obituaries' list of surviving relatives). My young cousins show up, because they play sports.

So, what is your sense of how often references to a person show up online? Are you surprised when its zero?

i am surprised when it's zero, being someone who sees her own web prsence as essential to her career, as well as her time-wasting enjoyment. but i shouldn't be, really.

the times i remember coming up zero have mostly been my israeli friends, though (& mostly in those cases i typed their names in english, not hebrew. i very occasionally type hebrew on my keyboard, but i haven't got letter stickers for the keys, so i have to go through all the keys anew every time i want to google something in hebrew).

i guess they're not quite as internetty there. i know many israelis in what i would consider my socioecomic group, who are still on dialup. that is very rare among my northamerican circle.

One guy was, though. Up until about three years ago he was CEO of Homestake Mining, one of the big gold extraction companies. When I realized the CEO was the same guy I'd hiked down the Grand Canyon with and then driven to Purgatory for skiing with, it made me feel inadequate.

I just got a notice from my fraternity about its new directory, so I went looking for guys who populated the same frat house I did. Very few of them even have e-mail addresses listed in the thing.

I just tried one of the few people from my high-school days that I'd care to renew contact with. Not much luck. I did get a few hits for an Helene Beaudoin, born in Beauport, but I doubt that the one I had in mind was born in 1739.

I had a similar desire to get in touch with people from way back, but I did it a little differently.

I put the names, high schools and dates into my blog (which, thanks to my better half's activities, is fairly well Googled). Then I sat back and waited for THEM to vanity Google and contact ME.

My top three targets (in terms of whom I really wanted to hear from) all either Googled themselves or were Googled by people who pointed them at me. I've enjoyed the resumed contact, though bits of it have been surreal.

2. Ex-boyfriend who put a lot of energy into being non-academic is now a professor of chemistry. I had to use my hand to close my mouth. He is also, more importantly, happy.

3. Strange ex-boyfriend is now a twice-divorced (with assorted crazy ex-wife stories, involving knives) TV director in Belfast. That meet-up the only time in recent memory that I was worried about coming across as being too ordinary and dull. I was right to worry.

They are the cream of the crop, and I didn't have to wade through the guys who defined themselves by their athleticism before they went to fat, the ones still trying to look 18, and the cultists to find them.

Mind you, I've never actually been to a high school reunion. My only real impression of them comes from Grosse Point Blank.

You certainly know interesting people, abi.

I heard that Billie Piper is leaving Doctor Who. If so, I am supremely bummed.

I had a different kind of experience not long ago. I was on the train, when a woman got on and sat in an adjacent seat. Because she had to squeeze by me and my bookbag we got to talking. Blow me down if we hadn't gone to the same high school -- she graduated one year before me.

Oh, who hasn't got a few of those?

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine...

I'm going to take a wild guess and bet that, like me, abi was always the good kid with the bad kid friends...

Interesting girlfriends? Not really....

Ex-wife from hell? Check.

What is that maniacal laughter I hear coming from the British Isles?

This is another Christopher Marlowe quote, from The Jew of Malta (act IV, scene i):

Barnadine: "Thou hast committed --"
Barabas: "Fornication? But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead."

Did one of the hardboiled detective writers use it, maybe? Seems up their alley, so to speak.

*Or, these days, "in a galaxy far, far away", but that's a different thing.

Naturally, I've treated myself, with the pocket reprint of the original Agatha Heterodyne comics and a calendar featuring Agatha that'll brighten my cubicle. I also got myself a calendar featuring Agatha's nemesis, Pirate Queen Dupree, that would also brighten my work place but might not be considered appropriate. I'll console myself by keeping her in my home office, right next to my Norman Rockwell calendar.

The gentleman mentioned in point 2 was the only ordinary one I dated. Swimmer, way out of my league for looks, we went to his prom and everything.

The gentleman in point 3 was the first (and third...it's complicated) guy I dated. I met him at Start Trek movies in Berkeley. We didn't go to his prom because there was a showing of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the same time. He once broke up with me based on a passage from Camus. We were 15 at the time. Then there was the time...never mind. You all read science fiction, I can't weird you out.

There is a fair argument that I was changed for life by the nature of the first guy I dated - that he set some sort of pattern for me. If that is the case, then I owe him a lot. If not, if I would have turned out how I am anyway, well, then I am still richer for the unusual experiences.

They still use words like "weird" and "strange" these days, but I seem to garner "odd" and "eccentric" as well. The difference between me now and then is mostly that I'm content with it.

I laughed.

Then I locked the entire team in a room, but that's another story.

You know, abi, I'm sure I saw a scene just like that in the movie version of Carrie.

A friend and I have decided that we need buttons that say "I'd've been a Goth Kid if there'd been Goths when I was a kid." As there weren't, we were just weird and morbid.

It seems I've told this tale here before, but I can't remember for sure.

Anyway, I was the one my English teacher picked to read "The Raven" aloud to the class...which I did in a black shirt with the collar up, and by the light of a blood-red skull-shaped candle I happened to have.

What's that?

Why, yes, this is my tea mug. Why do you ask?

Have you checked if Classmates has your school? I see they have Quebec, and what I assume is a large collection of schools. You can use Bugmenot for an identity to search without registering as yourself.

This summer I went to my [large round number it can't possibly be that many years] reunion. I'd never mainlined pure nostalgia before.

Far more secrets came out than at the last reunions: I suppose people have settled into who they are. (And we'd finally all learned to hide our disapprovals well, not falling into rabbit hole discussions like politics.) I found out that I almost could have had a boyfriend then (the lack of which in high school was a stress and a social horror). If I'd found that out in or soon after high school, it would have annoyed me. Now I just wish happiness on that branch of my existance-in-the-many-worlds.

Sadly, some who I'd want to see the most weren't there. Of course, they're the sorts who disapprove of nostalia-fests like reunions as a matter of principle (i.e. back in high school they didn't like proms).

One guy (also a zero-trace on the net) was a friend who'd turned me onto bookstores as a place of exploration. Got me to go to a Douglas Adams signing, that sort of stuff. (Not that I hadn't loved bookstores before, but I hadn't seen them as a place to hang out with friends, as a place that amplifies friendships.)

That instructor must have really driven you nuts.

I was very much not a Goth kid, but "weird" was quite probably my favorite self-descriptor at the time. These days I tend to self-identify as "zany." Thus far, my coworkers and bosses have seemed to agree.

That's funny, Kathryn. When we were living in Toronto, a fellow fan was telling us about his own class reunion and how he had been looking forward to it until he got there and saw that the neat kids from high-school were the ones who hadn't shown up.

Thanks for the suggestion on how to track down old classmates.

This December marks the 45th anniversary of my Grandma Sokolik's death, and the tenth of my mother's. In addition, after a year of too many funerals, already (starting with the first Sunday in January when I lost a cousin and an aunt within hours of each other, and working many variations on that pattern) I lost a cousin, again, on November 13th, an aunt on November 27th, and an uncle on December 9th.

Today my lovely and brilliant eighteen-year-old daughter is flying home from college for Christmas break; her plane's due in at SeaTac about the time the winds are supposed to start gusting to 65mph.

Please cherish your loved ones in this season of darkness and make good memories.

I'm sure your daughter will be fine. Think on this, this and this. Don't bother with this.

We're here if you need us.

There are only about five or six people, from a class of over seven hundred, from high school I'd care to see again. (A good day at high school was a day you just felt numb, rather than miserable.) The last time I got an invitation to a reunion, about fifteen years ago, every one of those half-dozen people were on the "We Can't Find Them" list.

Considering that one of them was someone I expected to eventually cure cancer, colonize Mars, and/or invade and conquer a mid-size South American country, I was surprised she had managed to vanish.

After the economy is stable, Chinese aspects began to incorporate themselves in the form of Marxist ideologies which are common to the Chinese.

Society teaches us everyday that the strongest, richest, and most cleaver shall hold power.

There government has political parties but still has the Communism factor involved that governs all of the people.

Mexico is the owner of its own oil. This oil is known as PEMEX.

Augustine helped to merge Judeo-Christian principles and beliefs during his time.

Aquinas believed that hearsay is punishable by death.

John Calvin worked close with Martin Luther although they had some opposing views of Jesus Christ being human or not.

Nigeria is a rash and unpredictable country.

Plato and Aristotle are Western thinkers whom have unclear views as to what a stable social order is.

This has me wondering what people setting up those reunions actually DO when they go looking for someone, Bruce. There probably are limits as to which places they can look, and their budget may not allow for a Phillip Marlowe to track others down. By the way, that fellow student you expected to eventually cure cancer, colonize Mars, and/or invade and conquer a mid-size South American country sounds like an interesting character.

Deep (and resonating*) sympathy. Even after going through something similar I can't think of what to say, other than that writing about in places like this is good. Spending the holidays sharing memories with other family is good.

Freakage. One thing I understand now that I didn't 2 years ago is that the fight-or-flight reaction is just simply useless for (almost all) parts of modern life. Floods of adrenaline aren't necessary for grief. Modern anti-stress meds aren't nearly what they'll be in 10 years, but they're good enough to ratchet down stress feedback loops. That's what I found.

* Two years ago I lost 3 relatives in 3 months, and I thought that was just too concentrated.

I'm down to two uncles on Mom's side and two aunts and an uncle on Dad's, and the knowledge that my generation is now the elders is as much a shock as anything.

All the "popular kids" had become anything from boring to outright losers.

The people who made my life hell in high school had grown up into perfectly reasonable adults; in other words, highschool kids are horrible, and this fact does not necessarily predict horribleness (horribility?) as adults.

Also, the husband of one of my classmates hit on me in the men's room, which was just too weird.

There's a large number of information brokers. I'd guess that between $15 and $50 would get you just about anyone's name and address. Because marriage records (or other sources of name changes) are public, and because change-of-address forms get into their databases, it's very, very difficult to stay out of them.

(Note on that page their list of brokers you *can* opt out of. Sadly, they also have a long list of ones you can't opt out of.)

Intelius is the one you'll get linked to if a Yahoo people search gets zero results, for example. They link people to previous addresses- in looking at what cities they list for me or my college friends (seeing the city-name is free), they do have our college town and subsequent towns (I moved away 10 years ago) listed for all of us. Yikes.

Is that why your class reunion was healing and gratifying, Xopher?

My best friend from high school is now listed for a lung transplant. If she gets it, she lives. If not, she probably dies pretty soon. At work we refer to this situation as pre-mortem. She is probably less pre-mortem than my other pre-mortem friend.

(I was morbid before I started this job, but it certainly fits me well. Dead people EVERYWHERE.)

I try not to remember high school. I certainly don't go to my reunions. Fortunately, by high school I was already deeply involved in fandom, so I had a social escape.

Memorable line from today's office holiday party, making me glad that I wasn't drinking enough to say stuff like this:

"Compared to the V.A., working here is like bathhouse s*x."

(I wasn't drinking at all, since when I drink I do stupid things, and I need to keep this job for at least a few years. I did do a minuet step, but that was by request and was more graceful than stupid.)

That bad, Susan? Sometimes, I get into a science-fiction mindset and ask what it'd be like if my current personality got thrown back in time into my body when I was still going thru high-school. A feeling of cold dread adequately describes things.

Sorry to hear about your friend.

1. Is the redowa really the same as the Dodworth new waltz?
2. Chemise and drawers: to tuck or not to tuck?
3. Pastourelle and Trenise or just Pastourelle?
4. If not formed as for the Spanish Dance, snowball or simultaneous?
5. What is the name of the fifth most popular set of quadrilles?
6. Black stockings with a black gown: suitable for America?
7. Whatever happened to the orchesographic siblings of the Gothic Dance?
8. Mazurka at 130-140bpm or 160-170bpm?
9. Koska, Coska, or Roska?
10. In proceding to the congress in L'Alliance, matching or mirror? Diagonal or zigzag?

While I'm on suggestions, I'm just back from seeing Satoshi Kon's Paprika, and I highly recommand it. Maybe a bit too structured for it's own good, but I think it's part of the charm.

If I had had my current personality in high school, I would have done all the things I should have done but was too afraid to do then. And I would have started dancing while I still had the body for it.

When I first saw the doctor about the recent TIA, he wanted to prescribe Plavix and I told him I'm in the donut hole of Medicare Plan D and I can't afford it. He looked it up and agreed. I've calculated that Medicare Plan D's effect on the Kaiser Medicare HMO will make me spend $300 more this year on meds than I did without Plan D last year. That's assuming I don't have to have extra meds before the end of the year.

Here's a friend's creation, suitable for Teresa, Patrick, and several other regulars:
Editing

I can't seem to get an URL to mine or I'd post it.

There is that aspect of the situation. Then I think of all the stuff I knew in high-school that I've forgotten and I'd have to really cram it all back in. Hmm... I think I'll stick with the me in the now.

I don't know if Chandler or any of the hard-boiled detective writers used the quote, but Zelazny certainly did in the Amber books. I just went to the shelf and flipped through "The Guns of Avalon" where I *thought* it ought to be, but I didn't spot it. My Amber-fu isn't as strong as it used to be when I was regularly gaming in that universe and could pinpoint a quote to its relevant scene and usually within two pages. I'm pretty sure it comes out of Corwin's mouth (most of them do), but it might have been Ganelon saying it.

That's probably where the "A long time ago" part got appended.

I could say the same. If my current personality were transplanted into my high school self, I would:

-dump my high school boyfriend much, much, much sooner
-not quit the International Baccalaureate program
-not dismiss out of hand the possibility of going out of state for college
-actually seek help for depression

It's a bit of a pickle, really, since the major changes in my personality came from making exactly those mistakes, experiencing the consequences, and learning from them. But it would be interesting to see an alternate universe where I didn't need to make those mistakes.

I'm considering journaling this, but can't figure out if it would lead to new insights, or just make me depressed about my current universe. Both, probably. But that might be a good thing.

Here's one of the papers: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033

And here's the latest one from October: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0610015

The claim is that you get substantial space-time frame-dragging effects - much bigger than any previous prediction - from rapid rotational accleration of a superconductor. (Remember, it took incredibly elaborate apparatus in specialized satellites to measure the minute degree of frame-dragging created by the entire Earth.) The October paper on arxiv seems to further claim that this somehow falls out of the range of values for the cosmological constant which are implied by dark energy. I don't really understand a word of this, I'm just regurgitating it, but if true in the scales they're reporting, it would seem to imply the possibility of artificial gravity generation. There's also mention of "massive photons", which sounds pretty heretical.

I'd love to hear what a real physicist thinks of this.

I've often said that if I had my youth to do over I would waste more of it.

I also take Plavix through Kaiser, and the last time I got it they charged me what they charge for generics, not what they had been charging me for a non-generic drug. I suggest you call the pharmacy; I know there's been a fight going on over Plavix's generic status, and the penny may have dropped. (Of course, it's possible they made a mistake, and 18 months from now I'll get a bill. This morning in the mail I got a bill from Kaiser for something that happened in April 2005. It's small, but still. Grrr.)

It's going to be all right.

I wouldn't have been the same person without the angst and the teenaged heartbreak. It just would have been good to know, or have the chance of believing, that it would all come out well in the end.

(I am conscious that this is not actually the end, and that it may not be all right in sum, but we'll elide that point until my seventy year old self turns up with photos and an invite to a cafe.)

abi... On the other hand, your younger self would not know what it is that she did to reach a life where things were all right. And we've all read F/SF stories of what happens then... (*)

On the bright moments in an adolescent life... During the 2004 worldcon in Boston, my wife and I had supper with another married fannish couple and the subject of high-school days came up. The man told us of this guy who was bigger than him who enjoyed bullying him. Then, one day, our friend's BIG brother came to that school, grabbed the bully and slammed him against lockers, swung his fist and... slammed it against the locker, extremely close to the head of the bully who got so scared, he lost control of his bladder.

(*) How about a sonnet on that subject for Asimov's? Hint, hint... After all, you did say I was your Muse.

On another subject entirely, today's Chron (SFGate) has an article by their Sex Specialist about "naughty knitting"! You can see it here.

When I got my invitation to my 10th reunion, I found I couldn't return it. There were options for "I won't be attending" and "I'll be there alone" and "I'll be bringing a guest". There wasn't one for "Why the fsck would I pay good money to hang out for an evening with people I hated being around when it was free?" So I just didn't send it back.

Zelazny certainly did in the Amber books...That's probably where the "A long time ago" part got appended.

Thanks, Rikibeth, I'll see if I can track it down. Makes as much sense as anything I've been able to come up with (and Amber had a bit of noir sensibility going anyway, which could be why I was thinking of hardboiled detectives).

Oh, she was. When she gave her valedictorian speech at graduation (since she was #1 academically), she used it to issue a passionate call for social revolution. The administration probably rethought their policy on choosing valedictorians after that.

I Googled her name a few years ago, but the only match that came up was for a m-to-f transsexual in Canada. Dee was definitely female. (Not what most people would call pretty, but striking, in an Ayn Randish sort of way.)

And for sheer brainpower... whoo, Jesus! She'd have made Teresa look like a dumb blonde. (And Teresa frightens me sometimes.) She could have gone to almost any college or university she wanted, with a full scholarship, but ended up going to a small private college that had a reputation for allowing its students to be largely self-guided in their studies.

I suspect the reason she doesn't show up on Google is that she may have ended up living in a foreign country. The last time I saw her, she was teaching herself French.

Our Hostess?

But that was a long time ago, in the past [*] . And besides, the bitch is . . .
. . . older.

[*] Which is another country.

The referenced character, btw, is certainly a bitch rather than a wench.

I am suitably envious.

I doubt it; Lords and Ladies came out in 1992. I'm pretty sure the "long time ago" version is older than that. Anyway, from the structure of your quote, it looks like Pratchett was doing his usual play-with-references thing. If he'd just been trying to point to the Marlowe quote, it would have been: "But that was in the past* and besides the bitch is older," with the footnote as given.

Except maybe in Star Trek's Evil Universe, Xopher?

All shall love her, and despair.

Duly noted.

Except, when you are playing "Thing" or "Mafia" with Teresa, at which point...

I was just about to post something about Donald Rumsfeld, but then I realized that I didn't really have anything useful to say. I had written a whole comment, but I didn't see the point in posting it, since it didn't add to the conversation at all and it wasn't very well written. I just erased it.

I find that I do that at least half the time that I come here to write something. Usually, I decide that my comment didn't have much of a point to it, or otherwise I find I have changed my mind about the subject in the few minutes it took me to write about it. Either way, I scrap much of what I set out to write here.

I suppose that just writing out my ideas helps me to better consider my position on a topic, even if that means that my position will change while I'm writing about it. Still, it feels kind of like a wasted effort, since no one else will see it, but that may be for the best since I write some boneheaded things now and then.

Am I just nuts about posting, or do any of you guys do this as well?

If you see a TNH with a little goatee, run away.

* * *

Interesting pattern to the power outages here in Portland's suburbs.

I saw one flicker last night, but everything stayed on.

All the servers were up and running at work.

But the shopping center across from home was in the dark, and the place that supplies the goods for Free Donut Day was shut down.

Frequently! (Discretion is the better part, and all that.)

Still, I find that the ability to "unsay" things is one of the advantages posting comments has over face-to-face communication.

...you hope she's on your side and hang on for dear life.

Actually, playing "Thing" and "Mafia" with her made me extremely relieved that she uses her powers for good. (Ok, I, typically, get fingered as Mafia about 2 rounds in despite being completely innocent. So it's more like watching Teresa play "Mafia" than playing "Mafia" with her.)

All in all, I'd still rather have had a shot at seeing an aurora.

Probably the full form of the quote doesn't appear anywhere there, though, so I don't know that it answers your original question.

Is "Mafia" the same game as "werewolf"?

One or two baddies in a group of innocents taking out the innocents one by one, with 2 of the innocents able to find the baddies or heal the innocent (but only one by one, too)? And the innocents vote off one person each round, hoping that they've caught a baddie? The two special-innocents have to signal their goodness without becoming baddie targets?

At a recent conference we came up with a hacker version: a group of hackers, two feds in their midst, a cryptographer that protects the hackers and an EFF lawyer who spots the feds.

What would be a writers' version: A group of innocent writers, two POD publishing scammers, an editor who gives writers a contract, and a blogger who unmasks the scammers?

[Note- the large number of question marks are not to denote verbal upticks at the end of sentences]

A taste: In Heaven, libraries are open around the clock, and the angels themselves compete to work there, to hone their skills.

General comment - I was wondering why the Kingston pigeons cull particle was posted, until I started reading the comments. Many of them were hysterical.

I suspected that I wasn't alone in doing that, but it's good to hear confirmation that other people do the same thing. I feel a little less weird about all the erasing that I do.

I guess it is one of the better aspects of Internet communication that you get to test out what you want to say before you say it.

I'll keep on not posting regularly.

Yes. I actually had read about it with the werewolf set dressing before ever playing it. The first time I played it was at Viable Paradise.
(http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html)

I know some folks with gas ovens will turn those on full bore to try to heat at least one room, and I've been told not to do that, but not why you shouldn't.

What should you do if you're facing an extended power-outage in a cold climate? Same thing you'd do if you were in the woods in that same climate. Dress warmly, drink lots of fluids, and keep up your sugar-and-fat consumption. If the situation you're in becomes untenable, seek shelter (National Guard, Red Cross, other as approriate/available).

Maintain battery-operated radios in good condition, with spare batteries. That's how the word will come to you of emergency relief.

If you know people in that situation, there should be Red Cross or other help available. Do they have phone service? Nearby neighbors?

Unfortunately, too many people try to heat enclosed spaces with gas. Google news shows thousands of CO poisonings (or deaths) just in recent reported news alone.

We always have 3 battery* operated radios available, 1 in the house, and one in each jump bag (my jump bag lives in the backpack I take to work).

The closest we've come to the above situation was the ice storm that occurred December 23-24, 2004. We lost power at 5AM and had it back at 3PM -- the line that supplied our power fell onto one of the main roads here, so it was the first one repaired!

I got to thinking about it today, and wondering what we would have done if the power hadn't been restored. That day, my answer was to bake bread. It put some extra heat into the house, and wasn't as risky as just running the oven.

*And extra batteries too.

The quotation comes from an exchange in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta in which a friar is taxing the Jew Barabbas with treason. It runs thus:

Friar: Thou hast committed
Barabbas: Fornication. But that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta is a piece that's worth reading (I despair of ever seeing it presented). Any play in which the Prologue is Machiavelli is going to be interesting.

On the other hand, I have seen Doctor Goldfoot and the Girl-Bombs....

Never seen it, Fragano. Wasn't that some Sixties cheesy Italian spoof of spy movies, with Vincent Price?

As a character with Lawful-Good alignment (yes, I can be quite square at times), I found the honorable action to take during "Thing" is to confess you've been thinged, then offer to the remaining scientists the option of letting you live one more turn so you can figure out who the other things are. turn them all in, and then be the last thing to be tested. In the end, Good wins.

Mafia, I haven't figured out. As far as I can tell, Mafia is Chaotic-Evil, and there is simply no way for a Lawful-Good character to 'win' in any sense of the word, other than try as best as you can. But, I'm usually pretty good at detecting liars, so I usually get whacked by round 2.

At least with Thing, if you're a scientist good at finding things, the idea of confessing is sort of an amulet of protection from being thinged in the night. Mutual assured destruction, as it were.

Mafia, I'm dead in the first couple rounds.

Sigh.

>One or two baddies in a group of innocents
>taking out the innocents one by one, with 2 of
>he innocents able to find the baddies or heal
>the innocent (but only one by one, too)? And the
>innocents vote off one person each round, hoping
>that they've caught a baddie? The two special-
>innocents have to signal their goodness without
>becoming baddie targets?

no "curing" in Mafia, but otherwise, that sounds
like the same game.

>At a recent conference we came up with a hacker
>version: a group of hackers, two feds in their
>midst, a cryptographer that protects the hackers
>and an EFF lawyer who spots the feds.

ROFLMAO!

Hadn't heard that version.

www.chrononhotonthologos.com for one of my favourite farces.

The mind boggles.

I have a referral (not authorized yet) to a vascular surgeon, which will probably be in January, and although I would go back to paying brand price then, I still won't take it because it goes against the amount of money that would put me in the donut hole. If I used Plavix even for a month, I would have to pay four months more of actual price meds later next year.

Seems like more and more people are digging in at a later age; I know someone who decided at age 30 to become a forensic accountant (official college major English, alleged major the opposite sex), and someone even older who took serious tech courses to have the background to be a modern midwife.

Serge: Peter Boyle was reported the day after Martin Nodell. Who? (my rxn also.) The creator of the original Green Lantern -- don't know why but the modern version was my favorite before Spider-Man came along....

abi "You're an intellectual, aren't you?"

Not as pointed, but when I once pooh-poohed the difficult of the Bach "Magnificat" (having that plus Boulanger, Ives, & Pinkham to study that weekend) a complainer about the piece answered (in tones of deepest loathing), "You're one of those sight-readers, aren't you?"

I've made most of my day-school reunions -- it was small enough and bright enough that typical anti-nerd behavior wouldn't have been tolerated -- and a couple of others; I was lucky in high school because I had escape via SF (checked out from a granite-and-sandstone building that \ought/ to have had bats flying out of the upper story) \and/ theater, which was important enough that if you made things happen even the swim team (which mostly thrashed college freshmen) left you alone. (Being single-sex may also have helped.) I sometimes doubt that I would have survived a public high school -- I was \seriously/ unsocialized. (One of the advantages of being a crew chief in theater was it taught me how many other people's work I'd blow up if I lost my temper.)

Puttin' on the Ritz...

Assuming the ailing Senator pulls through and we still have the House and Senate, why don't the Democrats pass a bill that will raise the top tax bracket by 2% per month until we leave Iraq?

I expect rather than being dynamically changed, it would have to be summed up once a year, and applied to the following round of filings.

Thanks for the hand-holding yesterday. I was fresh out of optimism. As it is, things went much more easily with us than the rest of Western Washington, except for a gate blowing open and allowing the cattle egress to my garden. The herb bed by the kitchen door looks as if it's been rototilled and the nice glazed frost-proof pots are, alas, not hoof-proof.

Naked Fudge

Next comes a layer of white chocolate, then it gets packed for the trip to New York, where something involving knives and wrapping paper happen, but I haven't given it much thought.

Having almost finished seeing all of Shakespeare (1.5 plays to go), I am trying to turn my attention to Marlowe, but so far I am cursed with a plague of Edward II and no others. I've seen two Edwards in the past year and another coming soon. (Red Bull Theater - after seeing what they did with The Revenger's Tragedy I'm quite eager to see their Edward.)

I've seen quite a bit of Shakespeare over the past few years. Living near Georgia Shakespeare helps.

B52s are indeed bombastic (and magnificent) in flight, but on the ground they always look a bit sad to me.

Of course, it's limited geographically, and English doubtless sounded very different elsewhere in Britain and the colonies.

The playwright may or may not have written 'God Save the King'.

I'll wear my "So if you're really a Goth, where were you when we sacked Rome" shirt

Did I see you in that at Noreascon? I enjoyed that shirt so much that I stopped you to take your picture.

(If it wasn't you, well, then there are two of them on the planet. If it was you, then, Hi!))

I make a pilgrimage every year to see several Shakespeare plays and catch others here and there as I can. I'm still missing Two Gentlemen of Verona, believe it or not, and the probably nonShakespeare Edward III. There's a few I'd like to see another production of, since I haven't been satisfied with the one(s) I've seen.

Right now I am contemplating the Bedford Lear vs. worldcon in Japan. That's a rough choice for me.

Hmm. I can understand the difficulty of the choice.

Wait. I thought he was strictly an Athenian?

Our SF club's Holiday Party was a moderate success, we had a good turnout even though we had it at a remote but cheap venue (Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham, MO, we pay a deposit but we get it all back if we clean after the function).

I'm a bit more content right now than I have in this weird holiday season (It's too warm, I haven't been able to get into the mood for a whole lot of reasons, work has been hell, ad nauseum).

Observation:

Those crank-up LED lights are really, really handy. At first, I used one to get around the apartment and light tea candles in strategic spots.

Then I realized "Duh, why am I rationing these things?"

I put propped up one on one of those pole-mounted florescent braizer lamps, pointed straight up. That alone provided more indirect lighting than three tea candles.

I put another LED lamp in a 2 quart plastic milk bottle with the top cut off. This diffused the light a bit and made it easier to move around; no finding something to prop it up against. I read a chapter of "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by it.

What the world needs next: an emergency house light version of the crank light, with a diffuser and a wide base and a hook on top.

Paula, below freezing here tonight. The people who DON'T have power back in the area here will have a cold time of it.

While Aristotle taught in Athens, he was from Stagira.

Peripatetic, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place ot place in order to avoid his pupils' objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.

Carol of the Old Ones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ftld7Ohojg&eurl=

And Matt Damon will play Kirk???

I. need. more. speed. Scotty.

this will be weird to watch, to say the least....

Our noisy neighbors, the ones with an unlicensed day-care and occassional amplified live rock bands, ran their generator 24/7 as long as their lights were out. I hope they have a patient on home dialysis.

(I'm all electricity and broad-band empowered again, and know that is evidence of some kind providence).

And let me guess that your neighbors are doing nothing to reduce their generator's noise?

The Burningman festival is filled with generators. Not building baffles or using other sound-reducing methods is considered rude. If any of your neighbors there have some heart, perhaps you could ask them to baffle it up.

...and then remember that after tossing in the minced poblano chiles, I had NOT washed my hands with soap and water.

Hoo. Boy.

Feel free to chuckle at the dope's discomfort.

(I should probably have searched out that old thread here on making habanero oil, but I'm lazy.)

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
The wench is dead,
Long ago too.

I did warn people I was no good at this.

I have buried
the wench
that was in
another country

and whom
you were probably
saving
for fornication

Forgive me
she was deceased
so distant
and so cold.

I have a different muse for doggerel. Your contract is safe.

That was unexpectedly creepy -- and very good.

That wench you planted last year in your garden,
Has she begun to sprout? Will she bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed her bed?

I haven't been following those particular experiments, but they sound interesting and the results look somewhat more plausible than the various other superconductor/gravity experiments.

Background: There are at least two or three separate theoretical motivations for believing that superconductors should have unusually large interactions with gravitomagnetic fields (not what we normally think of as gravity; electrical field : magnetic field ~:: gravity : gravitomagnetic field).

There have also been a number of very crank-buzzer-inducing claims of gravitational effects associated to elaborate experimental setups involving superconductors (to give an example of elaborateness, I believe one setup required a rotating superconducting disk that was a) accelerating, b) having a capacitor discharge thru it, and c) going thru its transition temperature -- simultaneously).

There have been a few decent experiments with YBCO superconductor -- all of which said "effect too small to show up with this setup", which was more or less expected.

This one looks interesting, possibly plausible, but the theoretical background in the second paper looks iffy to me (but I am not up on my superconductor theory).

Spindizzies?

Phew.

And Matt Damon will play Kirk???

I just had a parallel moment of cultural vertigo:
The Library of America will be publishing an omnibus edition of Philip K. Dick.

On the one hand, it's nice to see something sfnal take its place in the LoA (they've already done a volume of Lovecraft); on the other hand, PKD is supposed to be read out of a cheap paperback, not on a bible-paper HC. With a bound-in ribbon.

That's just not right, somehow.

This would be easier for me to take- after all, they're more than a hundred feet off- were it not for an accident of topography and accousitics which placed their back door at the point where, after loading hay from the big grey hay barn that used to grace the land, my sister used to stand and converse with me across the space without raising our voices.

But...William Shatner, for example, has been Captain Kirk for forty years. That's a long time.

I don't know. I made a lot of fun of the people who were complaining about Daniel Craig for James Bond, and Casino Royale was absolutely fantastic, but...sheesh, I don't know.

I think Star Trek needs something to revitalize it, but I think this is the wrong something. Yikes. I just don't know.

A melodrama with the trappings of science fiction, set in a fictional universe with a specified set of technologies and alien races? "Revitalization" in this case might mean a new ship, new actors, and another slight variation in setup.

I would hope that the franchise would start all over. No vulcans, no klingons, no transporters, no holodecks . . . none of the comfortable old recipes. Ditch everything but the concept of a starship staffed with skilled people venturing beyond a barely settled frontier to explore strange new worlds, yadda yadda.

Best leave now before I start whining about Farscape and Firefly again...

If you had a coworker who was exhibiting increasingly paranoid behavior, what would you do? Where would you start to research on this, to find good practical information on what to do next?

I'm thinking about this because of a friend of mine* who is dealing with / concerned with this (and I'm concerned for her). Her coworker (in a small Californian company) is increasingly behaving in ways which, while not provably 100% threatening, aren't "not threatening." That's bad- usually one doesn't have to think "is my coworker a safe person?"

I realize I have no good ideas on how to start searches for this, or where to look. Perhaps you have seen articles, or have thoughts on these situations? For example, have you seen a website with a good legal workplace discussion forum? Any ideas appreciated (here or by email): I've got nothing.

* Really, this isn't for "a friend." I work from home, and the major danger in my office is when a cat uses me as a ladder to get to the high shelves.

I would hope that the franchise would start all over. No vulcans, no klingons, no transporters, no holodecks . . . none of the comfortable old recipes.

If this is the script that's been green-lighted off and on since the Harv Bennett days, it takes place in Starfleet Acadamy, long before the TV series. Remember that Kirk was supposed to have been the youngest captain ever put in charge of a Constitution-class Starship? If it's the same script we see why.

It was the third of July and the weather was fine
Ed brought the hot dogs, the croquet set was mine
But the red ball was missing and three mallets were bent
Ed suggested lawn darts so to K-Mart we went

We looked by the yard games, we looked by the grills
But we couldn't find lawn darts come high water or hills
We talked to the sales clerk and she started to cry
She said "They're off the shelves now," and she told us both why:

A kid was pegged in the head with a lawn dart
Her dad didn't see 'er, that's the worst part;
A kid was pegged in the head with a lawn dart
So they're now off the shelves at the K-Mart

Well we both felt so bad that we gave up the search
Ed went to bed, and I went to church
And now we never grill hot dogs, and we don't play yard games
Since we heard that sad story things just aren't the same

Pegged in the head with a lawn dart (lawn dart!)
Her dad didn't see 'er, that's the worst part;
Pegged in the head with a lawn dart
So they're now off the shelves at the K-Mart.

Well - some of it would depend on what "increasingly paranoid behaviour" means ...

I'm thinking about this because of a friend of mine* who is dealing with / concerned with this (and I'm concerned for her). Her coworker (in a small Californian company) is increasingly behaving in ways which, while not provably 100% threatening, aren't "not threatening." That's bad- usually one doesn't have to think "is my coworker a safe person?"

I'd suggest starting with searches on "workplace violence". If my memory serves me well, there should also be a variety of resources for mental health as well - and although it's not quite the same thing, many of the resources for abused women may have pointers.

How does this "increasingly paranoid behavior" manifest? Is it covert (dark mutterings to themself, disturbing but civil conversations wth co-workers?), or overt (public arguments with co-workers or supervisors?). Has his/her behavior disrupted the workplace floor?

Is this a serious change in personality in the worker? Over what time period has the change taken place?

Does anyone know the worker on a personal basis? Have there been changes in their personal life that might be making him/her displace that personal stress to their workplace?

Are drugs or alcohol somewhere in this equation?

Is management aware of the situation?

You said this is a small company, so management may not have the experience or resources to deal with this. Does the company have a health plan, with mental health benefits, that the employee could be counseled to use?

I work for a big company, the Postal Service, that's had *ahem* a bit of experience with disruptive employees. Generally, there's a fair amount of tolerance for people "blowing off steam" and griping about the workplace.

But when employees get actively disruptive, erratic, or out of control, the usual procedure is: Take employee off workroom floor. If apppropriate, call 911 for medical assistance. Employee is placed on suspension. While on suspension, send employee for medical (i.e., drugs) and psychiatric evaluation. Depending on those results, employee may or may not be allowed back to work.

Disclosure: I have personal experience with those procedures. I tend to repress anger and frustration, sometimes for years, until it suddenly bursts out in VERY upset and VERY loud explosions (as P&T have witnessed, and even been the target of). So over my years with the Postal Service, I've gotten several of those free psychiatric evaluations. The good news: Getting VERY upset and VERY loud is about ALL I do, so the conclusion has always been "mostly harmless", and I've gone back to my job.

Your friend's small company may not have those resources available. But management should probably be made aware of what's going on, if they're not already.

Ave frater!!!! I thought I was alone. (In fact, until Google told me true, I was beginning to think I'd dreamed the song's existence...)

British poet Simon Armitage has done a new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Guardian has an interview with him here. There's a substantial chunk extracted, and I had to read it out loud. The two people sharing the kitchen with me weren't too unhappy with that, at least.

---

Gawain,' said the green knight, 'By God, I'm glad
the favour I've called for will fall from your fist.
You've perfectly repeated the promise we've made
and the terms of the contest are crystal clear.
Except for one thing: you must solemnly swear
that you'll seek me yourself; that you'll search me out
to the ends of the earth to earn the same blow
as you'll dole out today in this decorous hall.'

I must confess I don't know my Star Trek backstories well enough. Was Spock the first Vulcan to go to Starfleet? And would he have gone to Starfleet the same time as Kirk? Or was Spock so damn smart he showed up senior year and aced all the tests and was immediately assigned as science officer of the Enterprise? I just have a hard time seeing Kirk at Starfleet without him bumping into a young version of Spock somewhere.

And given Kirk's approach, he probably screws something up and has to have Spock save him. Hm, Spock will be the geek student that Kirk goes to when he needs some lab report written. That's how the two will meet.

I can think of no actor that would be of the appropriately young age who has the stuff to play a Vulcan. It seems like the actors coming up these days are all aiming for leading man, leading lady roles. There aren't any characters like there used to be.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go chase some kids off my lawn....

The result: We held a secret meeting behind his back, and we all agreed that he had to go.

"...While I was a student at the Hadley Female Academy, I dreamed -- as did most of my classmates -- of playing a part in the great struggle of our time, to preserve the Union and to advance the cause of Abolition. I feared that my contribution would be limited by my gender to the singing of inspirational songs, since my knitting is so bad that only a truly desperate soldier would want socks or a muffler from my hand..."

I am struck dumb (well, dumber) with WTFness.

If you are holiday shopping online,** Google*** is promoting their "checkout" service by giving $20 off for purchases over $50 ($10 if between 30-50) at selected sites (listed in the link- bunch of the usual sites plus pbs.com). This is on top of any deals the stores themselves offer.

Especially if you were going to be buying the items online anyways, and if you get a set of items to add up to $50+ epsilon, this can be a nifty deal.
(It's also useful if you don't need the items right away, so can use free shipping(5*), which will still get you the stuff in time for Julian calendar holidays.)

* Which I wouldn't write normally, but if google is going to hand out real tens and twenties in virtual shops, and good things are there to be bought****, and today is the last day to get 2-day shipping(5*) in time for a 23rd arrival, and I'm feeling good about what I just bought, then I think it's worth noting.

** I recommend the 2001 Saturnalia, or for reds the 1995 Christmas.

*** Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Google other than that they have the goods on my entire online life, half the people in silicon valley work for them, and they expect that in the 2020's their server farm will spontaneously generate an AI [a very helpful AI. Gai, the unemerged, be merciful to me, a searcher, now and in the hour of our 404.]

**** The Complete Monty Python 14 disc set. Copies of Blindsight. Good gifts.

5* free shipping often kicks in around $50. Useful convergence. 2-day has been about $5, so with s,h&taxes the $20 = 20% off.

All of Bruce's comments sound good.

I had to consult with my wife in her professional capacity a few years back, after a recent hire suddenly quit with some pretty bizarre and inflammatory emails about "You know what you have done to me!" etc. According to her, the number one risk indicator is if this person seems to verbally obsess about violence a lot - talk about their guns, talk about violent games, talk about revenge fantasies, etc.* Bear in mind that most of the mentally ill do not become violent, just as most of the sane do not. When an obsession with violence gets coupled with a descent into (e.g.) paranoid schizophrenia, that is when things get very bad.

I remember I found some good HR-oriented websites which had some helpful advice, but no longer recall what they were.

* Of course, she then added: "But it's hard to distinguish, given the violent video games all of you tech geeks seem to play."

For a 10-12 girl, who liked the Tamora Peirce books, Swallows & Amazons, and the Artemis Fowl books. I'm not looking for SF/F specifically, and any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

diana wynne jones! basically anything by diana wynne jones. my favourites happen to be witch week (superficially similar to the harry potter books, but written long before) fire & hemlock (a ya fantasy kinda-sorta based on "tam lin") & eight days of luke (where a boy from our world meets a norse god in trouble, & hijinks ensue).

but i've read everything i can find of hers, & most of it is ya, & all of it is excellent.

--Mary Aileen

Thanks. It's all quite recent and work-related: no illnesses, personal problems, or drugs. The behaviors are all technically covert- he hasn't said or done anything obviously threatening, but it sounds like he's barely able to repress a storm of fury. There isn't an HR department (too small), and I didn't ask about insurance.

In this case, the guy has been used to being first-among-equals (the small company "SC" has under 15 people). He has "big plans"- and my friend says unrealistic plans- for where the company can go. My friend and others at SC told him his plans can't work. That's when he started going weird.

The single biggest issue for her now is that he was caught singlehandedly trying to land a major sales deal. This is a problem:
1. he doesn't have the authority to make sales alone or to sign such a deal- but he acted like that to the client. (But he never technically lied to the client: seems like he's very good at being manipulative.)
2. The others at SC strongly believe SC cannot take this client.
3. The guy is now refusing to say what he's up to. He may or may not be talking to SC's other clients. He's giving off seriously bad vibes and scaring people, but nothing provably overtly.

Everything my friend says makes me think the guy is a sociopath- acts nice as long as everyone appears to be obeying him.

Also, pretty much anything in the Magic Carpet paperback imprint has proved to be excellent. (I believe that includes a number of books by our esteemed host Mr. Macdonald.)

My first thought: It sounds like the book would have to come with its own sense of 'self-importance' too.

I'm sure its a great book (it would have to be).

[ I did click through on the links... ]

Finally, just in time for the holidays, here is a little something for the soccer fan who has everything, including an iron-reinforced coffee table and a personal trainer to hoist the gift out from under the Christmas tree.

Manchester United's "United Opus" is the ultimate in excess from soccer's most excessive team, a mammoth 850-page limited-edition history of the club that sells for about $5,870.

The book, limited to 10,000 copies, weighs 77 pounds.

Is your friend simply "co-worker", or boss/owner/CEO? It's sounding to me like the decision-making chain might be a bit fuzzy. Maybe it's just insufficient information.

In a healthy and egalitarian company, as long as everything is functioning well, it often works well for everyone to make decisions collectively and share the responsibility for decisions. At my company, I had hopes for a long time that everything could be run that way. I ultimately learned or concluded that even if you do your best to have the best people, collective decision-making doesn't work for all kinds of situations.

This seems like one of those situations, when one staff member is metaphorically running amok; in that case having a seemingly indecisive CEO or manager will kill you. It might be that whoever is this guy's boss needs to sit this guy down and say "Look, you've been a tremendous asset to the company, but if you start doing things that jeopardize the company, we'll have no choice but to fire you. We don't want to do that." If the other staff feel that's the case, then they need to find out if the CEO - or VP sales, or whoever is responsible for this guy - already thinks that, and is already taking steps, or needs to be persuaded, or knows what must be done but is chickening out, or what.

(Don't forget that it's possible that the CEO/boss/whoever has already sat this guy down and had The Talk. A good manager will do this discreetly and will not discuss the results with others except to say "something was done", to avoid nasty HR repercussions.)

Last thought - while some good salespeople are borderline sociopathic, it also may be the case that this guy has sincere personal dreams about where the company could and should go, is seeing them thwarted, and is feeling a lot of anger while sorting his life plans out. During the period when I had to resign as president of a company, even though I had made the decision for myself that it was the best thing for everyone and for the company, I am sure I was sending out all kinds of intense angry and resentful vibes. Nonetheless I was able to contribute a lot to the company in the following years, from the different position I took within it. Was that an exceptional case? Maybe, I don't know.

My $0.02, Clifton

The structure at SC is fuzzy- there's essentially two layers (founders and support staff). Any other fuzziness is the result of how I'm describing it.

Generally, SC's structure sounds normal to me, that it's a typical small company, similar to many others I've known people working at / worked at. They'd all be folks who understand the ups and downs, the bubbles and crashes, of technology businesses.

And my friend has been at everything from very large corporations with 10 layers of middle management to fast-moving startups. That she hadn't seen anything like this guy before worries me. That she's worried, worries me.

However, I now know that a lawyer has been called. I did sent some links to workplace violence pages, and mentioned to take seriously any violent+obsessive talk (per your earlier comment). (And, other than my layperson's use of the word 'paranoid,' all of this is orthogonal to mental illness. "Colleagues of person are feeling fear" isn't in DSM V*.)

For me, I guess I've been lucky, or unobservant- I don't think (remember) I've worked with a person like that. I've had angry managers and coworkers, but all of the sorts described in "Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defence" type books. That's part of why I asked about it here: in trying to think about it myself, I was all over the map.**

*Other than to diagnose a new case of Homo sapiens vampiris. But that's DSM XV.

** my very wide net searches did let me discover that one can rent bulletproof vests online. And that there's a local spy store. Why not?

I imagine that if most people here on ML looked deep down inside themselves, they'll find a geas against making spelling errors here, no matter how they write in casual situations elsewhere. It isn't that an error makes the writer look bad, it's that an error would make all the other readers feel bad.

Read that comment just after listening to The Evolution of Vampires (pointed to by a link on Pharyngula).

From the comments at Pharyngula, it appears to be a teaser for Blindsite.

We had a long afternoon in Manhattan, KS, last weekend, between the graduation of my lovely goddaughter Heather from K-State (and the first time I'd ever set foot on that rival college's grounds in my life...) and the post-graduation party. (I graduated from the University of Kansas) We farbled around in aggieville among the couple of bookstores and I found:

The Puppeteer's Apprentice. I had the time to look it over, and the more I looked the only reason that kept me from buying it myself is that I'm only buying presents for others right now. It's called a historical fiction, but I felt it had some fantasy elements, but a lot of real life feelings and thoughts.

Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_ series was a favorite of mine at that age.

From near the end of the article:

... it was not until, in preparing this article, I calculated how much America’s Top 10 percent of income earners actually make that I fully understood how easy it would be for the world’s rich to eliminate, or virtually eliminate, global poverty. (It has actually become much easier over the last 30 years, as the rich have grown significantly richer.) I found the result astonishing. I double-checked the figures and asked a research assistant to check them as well. But they were right. Measured against our capacity, the Millennium Development Goals are indecently, shockingly modest.

These are issues I've been thinking about incoherently for a long time - feeling vastly privileged and unsure what to do with the obligation. This feels like it at least gives me some kind of framework to start thinking about it.

phew.

I'm sure no one's abusing the Patriot Act powers. Why do you ask?

------

(*) Yes, I do mean you over there in the corner.

We've all always known it, but now we've got pretty brain pictures to back us up!

Link

Well, I do have a requirement that I actually remember the production. It's possible I've seen it long-long-ago and simply spaced out. So that doesn't count. I'm also slowly oodging my standards up to "seen a GOOD production of", which will require me to repeat a number of them another time or three.

My morning has been made by a nice email from the director that the production of The Revenger's Tragedy I saw in January was in fact archived at Lincoln Center, so I merely have to manufacture a convincing excuse to go and view it once more. (Literally once more - you can only see archival stuff once in your lifetime, though I expect I could work out a way around that.) Since I'm already a regular researcher at the library there I don't think coming up with the excuse will be too strenous. I just have to figure out a way in for all my friends who didn't get to see it live.

(I have a review available if anyone wants it. Summarizing sentence: the director should switch to decaf before directing anything more delicate.)

Although it is Hamlet's line, I can't help but think of Austin Powers when I hear that phrase now.

Vanessa Kensington: That's you in a nutshell.

Austin Powers: No, this is me in a nutshell: [mimes being trapped in a nutshell] "Help! I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this bloody great big nutshell? What kind of shell has a nut like this?"

So, sing to me, O Muse
Of comics and the news.
The consensus of views -
San Fransisco values
Are singing the blues
With a banjo and trews.
I'm glad I didn't choose!

Rejected lines:
With their rawhide dog chews
In mixed pastes and glues
Off my blueish suede shoes
And angel allelu's.
We are eaten by Grues.

From Rob's comment, it'd seem that Hamlet indeed is Shakespeare's most quoted play.

So, Dan, that was Stoppard. I once caught its movie adaptation on the Independent Film Channel as done by Renaissance Fair actors. At the end of the movie, lights come on and Shakspeare is at the projector, waiting for the verdict of his nobleman sponsor, who criticizes the 15-minute version for being too long. Groaning, Bill gets back to work and we're 'treated' to the 5-minute Hamlet.

I know I've read that Shakespeare is the writer who's had the most phrases or lines make it into everyday speech; I'd guess that Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, or Macbeth would be the most productive plays. The number two writer, if I recall correctly, is Alexander Pope ("a little learning is a dangerous thing", "fools rush in where angels fear to tread").

And you're right about Scott and the "tangled web"

You mean this one?

(I *heart* YouTube.)

Rob Thomas's Rats Saw God and Doing Time: Notes from the Undergrad are also awesome.

For awesomeness, see also Rachael Cohn.

(I'd recommend everyone read these, by the way, and not just "young adults," whoever they are.)

Yeah, but I gather there's some debate over whether the Bible is a single author work or not...

Yeah, but I gather there's some debate over whether the Bible is a single author work or not...

I understand there is one school of thought that attribute it to three authors.

Sarah S @ 458: Yeah, but I gather there's some debate over whether the Bible is a single author work or not...

abi @ 459: I understand there is one school of thought that attribute it to three authors.

Which means that Sir Francis Bacon must have been one of the authors of the bible. The only question is, New or Old Testament.

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds
In Madagascar dark and still.
The birds awake, and had they words
They’d ask the moths to take their fill--

For nature red in tooth and claw
Occasionally shares its wealth,
And sharing pain and joy is law
Not only for the human health.

Thus hook’d probosces show the light
Of altruism in the night.

I understand there is one school of thought that attribute it to three authors.

i assume you mean the old testament. is someone claiming that multiple new testament gospels were written by one person? (i know a little bit of ot scholarship/criticism, but nothing of nt.)

No...I was making a mild joke about the Trinity.

This is just to say
I didn't warn
that news
was in that
URL

in which
I knew you would think
you'd see
poetry

Forgive me
for surprising you
it stood
on its own
______

I did want to add
more when I wrote
that link,
but it was

either
post it alone then,
or spend
all today

in writing
Octometer with
spondees
in each line

But what can you expect when we get our military advice from neocon blowhards who were never in the military? Seems to be a systemic problem, really.

aaahhhhh. i told you i was a new testament illiterate.

And what, pray tell, is a "San Francisco accent"? Or are we actually talking non-verbal? (Former residents of the Bay Area Really Want To Know.)

Goodness. That takes me back over 30 years ago. I did remember Shakespeare being in the book, but I had forgotten the bit about his giving that lecture. I did remember his encounter with the ghost of you-know-who, and that one of the other characters was a caveman also snatched out of the timestream by that futuristic society, and who had decided to call himself Alley Oop.

Simak doesn't seem to have as much notoriety/acclaim as many other science fiction writers for reasons I don't get. I've enjoyed most of his books quite a bit.

Yeah, Linkmeister.... I never could figure it out either. Maybe his stuff was too quiet. By the way, I once had the pleasure of meeting him, totally by accident, at Denver's 1981 worldcon. As I briskly went by a room occupied by the con's organization, I came to a screeching halt because there he was. I approached him, very cautiously, and yes, he was willing to autograph my French edition of City. I think I still have the photo he graciously allowed me to take before I went away.

VELMA:

The first clue came from Elsinore's high walls,
Where, so said Hamlet, Hamlet's ghost did walk.
Yet though the elder Hamlet met his death,
And perforce hath been buried in the ground,
'Tis yet true one would not expect a ghost
To carry mud upon his spectral boots.

(It seems like the kind of thing that must have been linked here ages ago, but it's new to me.)

It took 30 minutes just now to get one box of decongestant*, including filling out the paperwork, signatures, picture check, and writing my ID down**.

That I asked for the dye-free type was about 1/6th of the delay- the clerk quizzed me on why I wanted it! (Red dye isn't a medicine- that isn't good enough?) At least they still make it. A good friend gets vicious migraines if she has red dye, so she's one bureaucrats' decision away from a nasty choice.

Now for me, this time, it's a fairly light cost of time. I had a half hour to spare, today. (Took it out of xmas shopping time, though, and if shopping is a patriotic duty...) But I know it's a luxury to have spare half hours: many people don't. That unpatriotic thread details more extensive costs from this new bureaucracy.

* I'm flying soon. I like my eardrums.

** They really wanted a drivers licence, even though a passport is equally government issued ID. They had no idea or ability to say where this info goes (HIPAA anyone?).

Announcement: I know, should have taken care of it a week ago, BUT the rest of the bumper sticker slogans from the comment thread have been added to the main post of From correspondence: current sentiments.

So far, I'm really liking My Kid Is an Honor Student and My President Is a Moron.

I've been reading through Teresa's particle on Noka chocolate and finding it fascinating, even though I'd never heard of Noka before. The critic on Dallas Food is funny, smart, knowledgeable, etc, and the topic is interesting.

But here I get to page five and he really pisses me off.

"Go to Chocolate Secrets on Oak Lawn and you can get Cluizel bars from Madagascar, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, and São Tomé (though you'd be better off buying them online for about a third less)."

The website is called "Dallas Food," and the guy goes out of his way to bring up a local business and then discourage people from going there?!?!? Am I the only one left who still thinks local is important?

Ships of the line were clumsier, and as the name implies, meant to fight in line astern formations, which maximised their firepower. This had the effect that enemy ships could only penetrate the line by presenting their bows to it, which was usually fatal. Fleet actions therefore often resolved into a rigid side-to-side ship vs ship battering match, with victory going to the side with the most, heaviest and best-served guns. (Nelson's tactics at Trafalgar were unorthodox in that he realised that the composite Spanish-French fleet did not possess the liaison or the excellent seamanship necessary to maintain a rigid line, and he deliberately accepted the damage he would take in breaking into their line, because this would cut off its downwind elements, which were then defeated in detail.)

But why do you ask?

Over on the "Brilliant Sendup" thread, someone accidently did something with tags that made the whole thing almost unreadable in Safari from that point on.

Another poster pointed this out in a later comment. No moderators responded to this, so I made a post with the title "I see bad tags," on analogy with the "X sees comment spam" post titles. No moderators responded to this either, and until the thread died its own death, it remained almost unreadable.

Question 1: Can the moderators fix this kind of problem?

Question 2: Assuming the answer to question 1 is yes, do they consider it worth the time and effort to do so?

Question 3: Assuming the answers to questions 1 and 2 are yes, how does one notify them that it needs to be done?

I'm asking just so I'll know in the future.

The "I see bad tags" sounds like a good idea, although it does become one more chore for the hosts. I looked at the "Brilliant Sendup" thread in 'View Page Source', and it looked like the problem had been a botched link. Some HTML codes are permitted in these comments; others are not. It looks like there are already some safeguards to prevent problems like 'lack of closing italic code' from screwing up the entire page; maybe it will be possible to have something that will make sure that links are properly formatted, and strip them from the comment if they are not.